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Jelibean has discovered that many on the autism spectrum understand better if we use ANALOGY to communicate. Dr Temple Grandin herself a high functioning autistic wrote:

The more I learn, the more I realize more and more that how I think and feel is different. My thinking is different from a normal person, but it is also very different from the verbal logic nonvisual person with Asperger's. They create word categories instead of picture categories. The one common denominator of all autistic and Asperger thinking is that details are associated into categories to form a concept. Details are assembled into concepts like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. The picture on the puzzle can be seen when only 20 percent of the puzzle is put together, forming a big picture.

Pictures for many on the autism spectrum are key in understanding the ‘meaning’ of our lives. So if a lot of us ‘think’ in pictures it would make sense that we can talk in pictures too. We call it TIPS short for Talking in Pictures.

Using analogy we can describe what we feel to others in a way that we can BOTH understand. Indeed many of the articles on this website are written with TIPS in mind.Check out Meltdowns, School is a swimming pool and many others. We now understand that many autistics ‘think’, ‘talk’ and ‘write’ in pictures. For some literal thinkers though TIPS may not be so easy to understand.

Jelibeans are not good at describing or expressing how they feel. When asking questions such as

“How do you feel about your sister?”

Most jelibeans will simply look at you, shrug their shoulders and answer with a ‘dunno’.

HOWEVER – rephrase the question as…….

“If your sister were an animal what would they be”?

You may get a very surprising answer! One child answered “a spider”. Their mother only half an hour previously had explained their child’s phobia of ….spiders!

So it’s not hard to get information out of a jelibean providing you know HOW! Try it for yourself, you may just find life changes – for the better.